


description writing exercise

by magician



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-20 19:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13724640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magician/pseuds/magician
Summary: What happens after Blair decides to leave Cascade. See author's note before reading.





	description writing exercise

**Author's Note:**

> Written to participate in the TS Chat Concrit discussion. This is an incomplete piece of a story not meant for general consumption. 
> 
> Chat members: This is part of a larger piece I started writing a couple of years ago and put aside.

His next step was relocating.  He'd sold or given away many of his possessions.  The ones he couldn't bear to part with were packed in boxes in his old room at the loft, with Jim's blessing.  His clothes, laptop and sundry items were packed in his backpack and one suitcase.  He decided to start reasonably close; he bought a bus ticket to Seattle.  
  
Luck was on his side.  With Washington University between semesters, he was able to find inexpensive housing not far from campus.  With public transportation so plentiful, Blair decided to forego buying a car.  Now all he needed was a job.    
  
Deciding to see how far his reputation had followed him, Blair did a local internet search.  He sighed in relief when the coverage of his press conference appeared to be limited to Cascade. Then, Blair started to look through the want ads.    
  
Surprisingly, it wasn't his master's degree or his international travels that got Blair steady work.  It was his computer skills that served him in good stead.  He started cleaning virus-infected hard drives, kept abreast of new software, and discovered a budding software industry--automated billing and banking.  
          
With the boom in self-employment coupled with the affordability of home computers, it suddenly became chic to handle business needs with minimal staff. Software programs gave the small-business owner a cheap alternative to employing a personal assistant.  The only problem was understanding them.  Blair started a cottage industry installing and updating software, investigating the best programs, and teaching the owners how to use them.  The most popular was a billing program that would generate the bill, send reminders to the customer, deposit payments and feed into an income tax program. He did one-shot services, but he also had regular customers who wanted him to do a little more of the inputting. One of those caused an interesting ripple in Blair's life.  
  
Fernando, an up-and-coming clothes designer, was already famous enough to be know by one name.  He'd burst onto the Paris scene, which had been drowning in ennui.  Fernando specialized in indigenous prints, materials and designs from around the world.  Something about the colors, the draping, the merging, and sometimes clashing, of the cultures, enticed the fashion world.    
  
Blair stopped at Fernando's studio, taking advantage of his being in town for Seattle Fashion Week to update his programs.  He wished he'd picked another day.  The designer was obviously angry and screaming at everyone within earshot in several languages.  The problem seemed to be with one very short, very form-fitting dress made from block-print material that, even to Blair's uneducated eyes, was gorgeous.  And torn.  Right below one of the model's shoulders.  Natural curiosity made Blair listen in.  From what he was able to piece together, there'd been a perfect storm of mistakes.  Not enough material ordered, an unfortunate drag of the dress across a nail, no other material on hand that would match, and three hours 'til showtime.  
  
"Excuse me, Fernando, could I make a suggestion?  About the dress, I mean, not the software."  
  
Fernando looked at Blair and nodded.


End file.
